No abstract

This work proposes that both cognitions and emotions constitute individual or personal frames, and then it analyzes their effects on information seeking on public and policy issues. Our findings indicate that the stronger the emotional intensity, the weaker the prevalence of rational considerations in these frames. We also show that such emotional intensity is aroused not necessarily by the issues at stake, as most framing approaches suggest, but by the source publicizing them. From a case in Mexico, these findings are relevant at a time when politicians are becoming direct sources of information for citizens in a public communication context where political polarization represents severe challenges to modern democracy.

In Mexico access to technology has substantially increased in the past decade, while illiteracy rates have consistently decreased in the past 25 years. As a result, particular social groups are starting to use digital and social media to establish new forms of dialogue, creation, and participation and also to demand political responsibility and public accountability. However, the emergence of these new audiences as critical participants in the public space is not the outcome of public policy and programs aimed at fostering media literacy conditions. The programs launched by the government in the last 20 years are, at most, functional attempts to provide access to school children. But not only do they miss an adequate understanding of more complex education and media literacy debates, they have also failed to meet their own functional goals: to provide universal access to digital technology in schools.